Article December 23, 1911 Issue

"THE FAITH OF GOD"

CLARENCE W. CHADWICK.

There is perhaps no other word in the Christian vocabulary that has suffered more at the hands of ignorance and superstition than has the word faith. Neither Jesus nor his apostles are responsible for having separated the words faith and God. They employed the word in its highest sense, which always linked it with the infinite. When the Christ-healing was lost sight of, and human consciousness became impregnated with the erroneous theories and opinions of men, the word faith lost its divine significance and so drifted to the level of human belief. Upon this lower level, "without works," and therefore "dead," Christian Science found it, and has already gone a long way toward restoring it to its primitive place in consciousness, its true relation to the one Spirit, God.

The wide-awake Christian must admit that, according to the teaching of Jesus and of his immediate followers, there was nothing but God and His Christ in which to have faith. They taught and demonstrated the all-sufficiency of omnipotent power to care for every human need. They believed in no other power or influence; consequently they could have faith in no other. It is therefore evident that Jesus was in no way responsible for the divided faith which characterizes the lives of almost countless multitudes who profess belief in his teachings. Whence, then, the seeming departure from the exercise of that living faith which lays hold of omnipotence and trusts implicitly in its directing and controlling power? Disobedience to Jesus' commands is directly responsible for the divorcement of faith from God. Jesus said, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." Obedience to the Master's teaching would have preserved intact the living faith of the early Christians, and this activity of right thought, for such it would have been, would have barred out the thousand and one human inventions which have claimed the attention of Christ Jesus' professed followers.

Neither by precept nor by example did the Master pay homage to any so-called material law or agency. He was very positive in his conviction that, without the Christ, humanity could do nothing toward the betterment of its demoralizing conditions. He was never known to condone the use of will-power or hypnotic suggestion as a substitute for the activity of the Christ-idea; but he did say, "Without me [the Christ] ye can do nothing." Materia medica cannot point to the Christ-teaching for one atom of divine authority or sanction. Jesus was no material diagnostician, nor did he advocate the investigation and study of material laws and conditions in order to acquire an intelligent understanding of how to cope with them; but he did say, "Come unto me [the Christ], all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

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